Lmst

#robotshacks

Love Complex Automata? Don’t Miss The Archer https://hackaday.com/2026/02/21/love-complex-automata-dont-miss-the-archer/
#Art #RobotsHacks #Automata #Automaton #Cams #Kinematic

Love Complex Automata? Don’t Miss The Archer

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/21/love-complex-automata-dont-miss-the-archer/

<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Archer-Automaton-Episode-3-—-Solving-Cam-Profiling-with-Grasshopper-0-1-screenshot-banner.png?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div><p>[Oliver Pett] loves creating automata; pieces of art whose physicality and motion come together to deliver something unique. [Oliver] also has a mission, and that mission is to complete the most complex automata he has ever attempted: <em>The Archer</em>. This automaton is a fully articulated figure designed to draw arrows from a quiver, nock them in a bow, draw back, and fire — all with recognizable technique and believable motions. Shoot for the moon, we say!</p>
<p>He’s documenting the process of creating <em>The Archer</em> in a series of videos, the latest of which dives deep into just how intricate and complex of a challenge it truly is as he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grgIhw1YbHw" target="_blank">designs the intricate cams required</a>.</p>
<p><figure class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_920571" style="width: 800px;"><a href="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Archer-Automaton-Episode-3-—-Solving-Cam-Profiling-with-Grasshopper-1-27-screenshot.png" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="wp-image-920571 size-large" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Archer-Automaton-Episode-3-—-Solving-Cam-Profiling-wit

Reverse Engineering a Dash Robot with Ghidra

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/14/reverse-engineering-a-dash-robot-with-ghidra/

<div><img alt="A marketing image of a Dash educational robot is shown. It is made of a triangle pyramid of four plastic spheres. Two of the base spheres house wheels, and the top sphere houses a speaker, lights, and sensors." class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/dash_reverse_engineering.png?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div>
<p>One of the joys of browsing secondhand shops is the possibility of finding old, perhaps restorable or hackable, electronics at low prices. Admittedly, they usually seem to be old flat-screen TVs, cheap speakers, and Blu-ray players, but sometimes you find something like the Dash, an educational toy robot. When [Jonathan] came across one of these, he decided to use it as a turtle robot. However, he found the available Python libraries insufficient, and improving on them <a href="https://www.robopenguins.com/reverse-dash/" target="_blank">required some reverse-engineering</a>.</p>
<p><span id="more-915583"></span></p>
<p>While [Jonathan] was rather impressed with the robot as it was – it had a good set of features, and thought had clearly been put into the design – he wanted a more open way to control it. There was already a quite useful, official Python program to control the robot over a BLE connection, but it only worked with Python 2 on OS X ([Jonathan] theorizes that it might have been written as a development tool, open-sourced, and

Reverse Engineering a Dash Robot with Ghidra https://hackaday.com/2026/02/14/reverse-engineering-a-dash-robot-with-ghidra/
#ReverseEngineering #RobotsHacks #Dash #Educationalrobot #Ghidra

R2D2 Gets New Brains https://hackaday.com/2026/02/13/r2d2-gets-new-brains/
#RobotsHacks #ToyHacks #R2d2 #Robot #Starwars

3D Printing Pneumatic Channels With Dual Materials for Soft Robots

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/13/3d-printing-pneumatic-channels-with-dual-materials-for-soft-robots/

<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="509" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/soft_robotics_multi-material_printing_K_Wilt_et_al_2025.jpg?w=782" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="782" /></div><p>Pneumatics are a common way to add some motion to soft robotic actuators, but adding it to a robot can be somewhat of a chore. A method <a href="https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202510141" target="_blank">demonstrated by [Jackson K. Wilt] et al.</a> (<a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/news/3d-printing-soft-robots" target="_blank">press release</a>, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18095" target="_blank">preprint</a>) involves using a 3D printing to extrude two materials: one elastomeric material and a fugitive ink that is used to create pneumatic channels which are dissolved after printing, leaving the empty channels to be filled with air.</p>
<p><a href="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/soft_robotics_multi-material_printing_test_hinge_K_Wilt_et_al_2025.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-916187 alignright" height="294" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/soft_robotics_multi-material_printing_test_hinge_K_Wilt_et_al_2025.jpg?w=294" width="294" /></a></p>
<p>By printing these materials with a rational, multi-material (RM-3DP) custom nozzle it’s possible to create various channel patterns, controlling the effect of compressed

3D Printing Pneumatic Channels With Dual Materials for Soft Robots https://hackaday.com/2026/02/13/3d-printing-pneumatic-channels-with-dual-materials-for-soft-robots/
#RobotsHacks #Pneumatic #Softrobotics

Robots Talking to Robots

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/07/robots-talking-to-robots/

<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/voice-vacuum-main.png?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div><p>Although there are a few robots on the market that can make life a bit easier, plenty of them have closed-source software or smartphone apps required for control that may phone home and send any amount of data from the user’s LAN back to some unknown server. Many people will block off Internet access for these types of devices, if they buy them at all, but that can restrict the abilities of the robots in some situations. [Max]’s robot vacuum has this problem, <a href="https://wip.tf/posts/controlling-an-air-gapped-robot-vacuum-from-home-assistant-using-synthesized-speech/" target="_blank">but he was able to keep it offline while retaining its functionality by using an interesting approach</a>.</p>
<p>Home Assistant, a popular open source home automation system, has a few options for voice commands, and can also be set up to transmit voice commands as well. This robotic vacuum can accept voice commands in lieu of commands from its proprietary smartphone app, so to bypass this [Max] set up a system of automations in Home Assistant that would command the robot over voice. His software is called <a href="https://github.com/nbr23/jacadi" target="_blank">jacadi</a> and is built in Go, which uses text-to-speech to command the vacuum using a USB

Robots Talking to Robots https://hackaday.com/2026/02/07/robots-talking-to-robots/
#RobotsHacks #Airgap #Automation #Homeassistant #Privacy #Texttospeech #Vacuum #Voicecommand #Voicecontrol

How Industrial Robot Safety Was Written in Blood

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/05/how-industrial-robot-safety-was-written-in-blood/

<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/robot_warning.png?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div><p>It was January 25th of 1979, at an unassuming Michigan Ford Motor Company factory. Productivity over the past years had been skyrocketing due to increased automation, courtesy of Litton Industry’s industrial robots that among other things helped to pick parts from shelves. Unfortunately, on that day there was an issue with the automated inventory system, so Robert Williams was asked to retrieve parts manually.</p>
<p>As he climbed into the third level of the storage rack, he was crushed from behind by the arm of one of the still active one-ton transfer vehicles, killing him instantly. It would take half an hour before his body was discovered, and many years before the manufacturer would be forced to pay damages to his estate in a settlement. He only lived to be twenty-five years old.</p>
<p>Since Robert’s gruesome death, industrial robots have become much safer, with keep-out zones, sensors, and other safety measures. However this didn’t happen overnight; it’s worth going over some of the robot tragedies to see how we got here.</p>
<p><span id="more-914230"></span></p>
<h2>Just Following Orders</h2>
<p>Perhaps the the most terrifying aspect about most industrial robots is that they are fairly simple machines, often just an arm con

How Industrial Robot Safety Was Written in Blood https://hackaday.com/2026/02/05/how-industrial-robot-safety-was-written-in-blood/
#HackadayColumns #RobotsHacks #Healthandsafety #Industrialrobot #Industrialsafety

Print-in-Place Gripper Does It With a Single Motor

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/02/02/print-in-place-gripper-does-it-with-a-single-motor/

Print-in-Place Gripper Does It With a Single Motor https://hackaday.com/2026/02/02/print-in-place-gripper-does-it-with-a-single-motor/
#RobotsHacks #3dprinted #Flexiblefilament #Gripper #Robotics #Servo

Light Following Robot Does It The Analog Way https://hackaday.com/2026/01/28/light-following-robot-does-it-the-analog-way/
#RobotsHacks #Robot #Robots

Light Following Robot Does It The Analog Way

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/01/28/light-following-robot-does-it-the-analog-way/

<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="449" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/img_20171210_164627-e1769401366862.webp?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div><p>If you wanted to build a robot that chased light, you might start thinking about Raspberry Pis, cameras, and off-the-shelf computer vision systems. However, it needn’t be so complex. [Ed] of [Death and the Penguin] demonstrates this ably with a simple robot <a href="https://deathandthepenguinblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/a-simple-light-chasing-robot/" target="_blank">that finds the light the old-fashioned way.</a></p>
<p>The build is not dissimilar from many line-following and line chasing robots that graced the pages of electronics magazines 50 years ago or more. The basic circuit relies on a pair of light-dependent resistors (LDR), which are wrapped in cardboard tubes to effectively make their response highly directional. An op-amp is used to compare the resistance of each LDR. It then crudely steers the robot towards the brighter light between turning one motor hard on or the other, operating in a skid-steer style arrangement.</p>
<p>[Ed] then proceeded to improve the design further with the addition of a 555 timer IC. It’s set up to enable PWM-like control, allowing one motor to run at a lower speed than the other depending on the ratio between the light sensors. This provides much smoother steering than the hard-on

Electric Lawnmower Gets RC Controls https://hackaday.com/2026/01/27/electric-lawnmower-gets-rc-controls/
#Homehacks #RobotsHacks #Lawnmower #Remotecontrol #Robot #Wheelchairmower

Building A Little Quadruped Robot https://hackaday.com/2026/01/24/building-a-little-quadruped-robot/
#RobotsHacks #Quadruped #Quadrupedrobot #Robot #Servos

Robot Sees Light with No CPU https://hackaday.com/2026/01/19/robot-sees-light-with-no-cpu/
#Classichacks #RobotsHacks #CdScell #Ldr #Lightdependentresistor #Robot

The Best Robot Mop System: Flat, Spinning, or Roller? https://hackaday.com/2026/01/17/the-best-robot-mop-system-flat-spinning-or-roller/
#Homehacks #RobotsHacks #Robotmop

Building a Carousel Autosampler https://hackaday.com/2026/01/15/building-a-carousel-autosampler/
#RobotsHacks #ToolHacks #Autosampler #Laboratoryequipment

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